The Cat Who . . . mysteries. The first four were excellent. The next four or five (written several years later) were pretty good. Gradually, one got the feeling one was reading the same book over and over.

After some of the original characters died off or moved I got bored. With the final book I was just glad the series was over.

To be really disappointing the series needs to have a good start, just to hammer home the wasted potential.

For me it was Jean M. Auel's series, which probably should have ended at book four. Xanth became a little repetitive, and disturbing in parts, and I lost interest. I stopped following Dragonriders of Pern around All the Weyrs of Pern. It just felt as if the story had been told and this was a natural close. And then there was the Dune stories, which were good for the first three, worse for the rest, and then Frank Herbert died and Brian Herbert took over and the series took a nosedive.

Same as many others: Clan of the Cave Bear and Dragonriders of Pern both started with excellently fleshed-out settings, but after the first few books, everything of interest in the worlds had been explored, and the author was left trying to maintain the same level of interest with plot alone. Unfortunately, by that stage, the author had not only run out of interesting world aspects, but interesting plot. They got kind of weak and repetitive.

Dune was similar, except that the later books would have done better as a few short stories: there wasn't enough in them to be worth stretching into a whole book. They mostly just spouted the political philosophy of the author anyway (the son of the original author).

And I'll say it: Twilight. I read them very shortly after they came out, and had not heard of it in the media or anything at all yet. I thought it was about chess from the cover. A friend recommended it to me, and so of course I read three (or is it four? I forget) books in a night. For something about immortal superpowered vampires, it sure managed to be outstandingly dull, poorly written, full of paper-thin characters, and packed with very disturbing morals (beauty = good, budding rapist = romantic, hormones > actually learning to love someone, stalker = charming, etc). I mean holy cow. A few weeks later the whole "Twilight sucks" meme started, so I like to think I'm a trend setter.

I will never get back the hours I spent trying to get to the "exciting parts" I was promised.

Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series. She just drove that train right into the ground. Such a shame!

I agree 100%. What happened there?? I loved the first few books, but the plots just got more and more far-fetched, and the writing more and more dense. The last one I read, I had to give myself permission to just stop reading and give up (which I NEVER do). Just awful.

To be really disappointing the series needs to have a good start, just to hammer home the wasted potential.

For me it was Jean M. Auel's series, which probably should have ended at book four. Xanth became a little repetitive, and disturbing in parts, and I lost interest. I stopped following Dragonriders of Pern around All the Weyrs of Pern. It just felt as if the story had been told and this was a natural close. And then there was the Dune stories, which were good for the first three, worse for the rest, and then Frank Herbert died and Brian Herbert took over and the series took a nosedive.

I put the end at "The Masterharper of Pern." When a major and much beloved character dies, there isn't much farther to go. I have gotten the later books from the library, but have no interest in putting them on my own bookshelf.

POD to the posters who mentioned the Kay Scarpetta series and the Cat Who... series - I used to love both of those, but Scarpetta just got too unlikeable, and The Cat Who... series became too repetitive (and there were at least a few times where they contradicted each other as well). The other one I have to add is the alphabet mystery series (A is for Alibi, etc.). I can't remember the author, but that was another one I enjoyed for a while, but just lost my interest.

I thought that it started out pretty well, but by the time I hit the 5th or 6th book I felt like I was being punned to death. Someone gave me one that I hadn't read, and I figured I'd give it a shot since I haven't picked up a Xanth book in years. I made it through about 20 pages.

The incredible emphasis on underpants was what did me in. I can scarcely care what color my own underpants are, much less enjoy giggling about the inadvertent revelation of someone's colorful underpants.

POD to the posters who mentioned the Kay Scarpetta series and the Cat Who... series - I used to love both of those, but Scarpetta just got too unlikeable, and The Cat Who... series became too repetitive (and there were at least a few times where they contradicted each other as well). The other one I have to add is the alphabet mystery series (A is for Alibi, etc.). I can't remember the author, but that was another one I enjoyed for a while, but just lost my interest.

The other one I have to add is the alphabet mystery series (A is for Alibi, etc.). I can't remember the author, but that was another one I enjoyed for a while, but just lost my interest.

Sue Graffton?

That's it -- Sue Grafton's series featuring her detective Kinsey Milhone (sp?), set in Sacramento. Gets a mention in Rebecca's original "Running Out Of Series" thread.

I couldn't handle this series -- read two or three in it, and then gave up. Not because of its being IMO badly written or plotted, or deteriorating as it went on; it was just that I couldn't stand the heroine and first-person narrator, Kinsey -- found her intolerably smug and pleased with herself. But "that's just me"...

PeterM - I totally agree about Dickson's Dragon Knight series. Started out great, degenerated into meh. Funny thing, I met Mr. Dickson in 1979 at NonCon here in Edmonton, and at that time he would rather filksing that talk about his books.